


Indiana Jones and the Corpse of the Saint

by otblock57



Category: Indiana Jones Series, ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run, Jojo - Freeform, Young Indiana Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:55:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28064310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otblock57/pseuds/otblock57
Summary: Indiana Jones wants to escape his father's legacy, to be known as someone other than Professor Jones' kid (Please, don't call me Jones Junior), and to make his own way. However he hoped to do that, he certainly wasn't expecting anything quite as bizarre as Stands and Corpse Parts!Set in a universe where the Steel Ball Run never took place, but integrates elements from Steel Ball Run.





	Indiana Jones and the Corpse of the Saint

Because of his father, Indiana Jones was rather up to date on the hottest archaeological news, and even if he didn’t get along with his father, getting to tag along with him or one his colleagues to see some far flung site to explore ancient knowledge was always fascinating.

When Indy first heard the idea of Christ himself coming to America and dying there, he thought it was laughable- another wild goose chase, like the Holy Grail that his father chased so doggedly. Of course, that didn’t mean Indy was going to give up a chance to go on a dig with Professor Ravenwood in Arizona.

Indy had a sneaking suspicion this dig was a side project between the real visits to the Holy Land or Africa, and the decision to follow the American Christ rumors was in large part done to give the appearance of doing something between the actual digs. Of course, archaeology was archaeology, and there was always the chance of finding something interesting out there.

\------

For the first few days, the trip went about as well as could be expected. Their guides knew the land like the back of their hands and the horses were handling the heat wonderfully. Some of the other students tried to push for using cars or trucks to haul their stuff, but Indy suspected the real reason behind that request was not being able to ride.

The land was definitely harsh, all rolling red plains dotted with hearty plants, but the towering buttes made for incredible scenery and more importantly provided shade from the brutal sun. The main goal of the trip was of course to investigate the supposed Christ rumors, although they were also keeping their eyes open for a vanished unit of the US army- apparently some cavalry sent to map the area had simply vanished, with no survivors.

Sure, the desert was no place to go exploring unprepared, but the US Army should have proved more than capable of mapping some desert. Of course, they could have angered the Indians of the region, but Indy didn’t realize something else was at play until they had spent several days baking in the desert.

The first thing that seemed off when was when the sun practically refused to set. Of course, it was summer and the days were long, but the sun hanging high in the sky even as Indy’s watch said the time was rapidly approaching six o’ clock in the evening.

Soon enough, they were running out of water and the horses were the first to go, collapsing in the heat of the sun. Of course, by that point even the water supplies for the men were running low, and in desperation they cut the horse’s necks and drank blood like the Mongols who rode with the great Khan. The taste of copper stayed in on Indy’s tongue until the men started dropping too, succumbing to a day that never seemed to end.

He tried to help as best he could, but the heat and the delirium it caused made doing much of anything a pain. His breath came in rattling gasps through cracked lips, and as Indy tumbled into the sand he felt a mix of terror and regret. Was he going to die here, in some blight in the desert, never to be known as anything more than Jones Junior?

The sand shifted under him, and Indy idly realized that he was sliding down an incline, towards something, and he felt something brush against the top of his head. Oh, he lost his hat. Whatever was at the bottom of the ditch Indy slid into, he could feel it against the top of his head, desiccated fingers in his hair-

Suddenly he felt a rush of energy and a strange feeling of something settling into his arm, almost like when his father popped his shoulder back into its socket after he had dislocated it as a little kid. At least now his head felt clear, although he was still incredibly thirsty- suddenly, he had a feeling in his gut that there was water to his north.

After clambering up the sides of the hole he had fallen into and nearly falling back down as the sands shifted under his feet, he practically tripped over the rim and pulled himself towards the place where he _knew_ the water to be. He saw a canteen strapped to the side of his horse, one that he had thought he drained dry days ago, but as he held it in his hands he could feel the leather shifting and creaking, forcing every last drop of water out of every crevice.

He gulped down what few drops there were greedily, and looking down he nearly jumped back in fright. Something stood in front of him, humanoid but far too small to be a man, perhaps a foot tall, but covered in rippling muscle despite its small size. It had horns like a bull but skin like processed leather, black and shiny, and eyes that burned red like embers.

“Black Leather…” Indy muttered a name under his breath, and he knew it was this creature’s name. Whatever it was, it was a part of him, and it was definitely strange to be looking himself in the face.

Looking around, Indy couldn’t see a spot of shade anywhere nearby, except for some towering stone columns in the distance, seeming natural and yet surrounding Indy and the basin he found himself in like a clawed hand. The sun was still as high in the sky as it had been for the last few… days? He could barely tell.

There was a terrible creaking noise from all around him, and gazing around Indy saw that the sound was coming from near the horses, their packs, and even his less fortunate companions. Suddenly, any leather nearby went flying into the air: saddles bending themselves flat, boots unraveling themselves, books flapping into the air- and the leather formed a great canopy above him that finally gave him some protection from the sun.

Indy started stumbling away, not quite sure what direction he was heading other than out of whatever cursed place he found himself in. As regretful as it was, he knew he would have to leave the bodies behind, as he was barely capable of moving himself. At the very least, the great patchwork leather structure saving from the sun’s harsh rays moved with him, apparently the work of his new ability (companion?) Black Leather.

\------

After a few day’s walk, he finally found some sort of civilization, a little town they had resupplied at before diving into the desert. The impromptu umbrella of leather that formed when Indy first gained black leather fell to the ground as Indy escaped that terrible landform, but he did make sure to salvage what notebooks he could.

He certainly made an impression, stumbling into town with a bunch of books under his arms and a delirious look in his eyes as he licked at parched lips. Fortunately, the town had a pump, and Indy dropped everything he was holding as he drank greedily, water flowing down his chin and soaking his clothes.

“Are you alright, son?” Looking up, Indy could see one of the townsfolk, the very man that had sold them more supplies in fact, looking down at him with concern on his face.

“Now I am… Although I’m hungry. And thirsty. Everyone else in the expedition… dead in the desert. Thirst.”

“By Jingo, boy! Get inside.”

\------

To say that the academic scene was shaken by the death of Professor Ravenwood and nearly his entire expedition would be an understatement. Of course, there was an investigation, and Indy provided as much evidence as he could reasonably expect the officers to believe. They seemed to laugh off that strange piece of land where the sun never set as the delusions of a horrified teenage boy, but all the company revealed another thing: whatever Black Leather was, normal people couldn’t see it.

Black Leather could definitely affect the world, whether by moving around leather or by physically pushing with its body, and while people could see the leather doing supernatural things they couldn’t see the source. It seemed to be dependent on Indy in some way, and was incapable of traveling more than 50 or so yards from Indy’s person, at least without loosing what powers it did have.

Indy eventually found himself traveling back to the University of Chicago, Professor Ravenwood’s institution, to meet his father and to return what notes he had salvaged to the professor’s family, although Indy doubted that the man’s little daughter Marion could do much with the notes, considering how she about seven years old. Indy lost his mother to scarlet fever at thirteen, and he couldn’t imagine loosing a parent at half that age would feel much better.

Above all, the entire expedition’s deaths felt incredibly wasteful, dozens dead for a crackpot theory. At the very least, he wanted to have an understanding of whatever tempted them into that desert- and so he could find whoever came up the idea and slug them.

As Indy’s train thundered from Arizona to Chicago, Indy cautiously took out the first of the journals he had salvaged and pushed the aged leather cover to the side, revealing a simple title scrawled onto the first page: _Notes on the Holy Corpse._

\------

_The Saint’s Corpse, or The Holy Corpse, are a series of relics composing a human body, believed by some to be the earthly remains of Christ himself, and if the rumors of their existence prove true, they are scattered all over the American countryside._

_Historical records from Glastonbury show a map with a remarkable resemblance to Northern America drawn long before 1492, although while the broad strokes of the map are very similar to America, a complete and accurate copy has never surfaced. Rumors say that a copy has made it to America and several expeditions chased the parts, although none have ever produced results (or they fell apart before reaching the parts). The most famed of these groups is the Order of the Blessed St. Joseph of Arimathea, a fraternal Italian holy order of Catholics that was at first devoted to chasing the corpse before turning to more mundane good works and acts of charity._

_Some scholars claim they’re related to anomalous regions scattered across America: the Devil’s Palms, strange landforms consisting of deep basins surrounded by pillars of stone, forming a shape rather like a palm, hence the name. While widely associated with bad luck and misfortune by the native people of America, reports of palms seem to line up with theorized locations of the Corpse Parts, most notably in the deserts of Arizona._

_\------_

Reading the rest of the notes really didn’t turn up much more than that, and Indy couldn’t help but feel that something supernatural was at play here. The Devil’s Palm and its associated dangers would certainly provide an explanation for the deaths of the rest of the expedition. Of course, that logically meant that whatever caused that strange feeling in his left arm, whatever gave him Black Leather, must have been a part of the Holy Corpse.

Before he could start going too far down that particular rabbit hole, he turned to look out the window and saw someone running by the side of the train, apparently trying to jump on as it slowed to go around a curve. Of course, hobos hopping onto trains wasn’t a foreign concept to Indy, but this man was unusual, or rather, he kept unusual company.

As he ran to keep up with the train, a figure floated behind him- many times taller than Black Leather and a little taller than than the average man, although the gleaming silver skin was probably the feature that would make it stand out in a crowd. Both the man and the strange figure disappeared as the former was helped by the latter onto the boxcar behind Indy’s car.

Looking around, Indy saw that the car was empty and no one else had seen the man- of course, this wasn’t a very high traffic route, and majority of the train’s length was taken up by the same sort of boxcar that the hobo had jumped into.

Was the strange apparition that stayed with the man similar in some way to Black Leather? If not exactly the same, perhaps the same species, just of different breeds? Cautiously, Indy prepared to enter the boxcar.

_\------_

The car was filled with sacks of flour which were piled almost to the roof in some places, although Indy managed to navigate a path through the heavy stacks to see the mysterious man. “Hello?”

The man turned, revealing a face covered in unkempt, dark stubble that contrasted with the smooth, metallic visage of his companion. “Who’re you-” He froze the moment he laid eyes on Black Leather, who floated over Indy’s shoulder like some parody of those classic shoulder angels and devils.

“You’ve got a Stand too?”

“A Stand?” Is that what they were called? Because they stood next to the user? Just as fair a name as any other, Indy supposed.

“You went into the Devil’s Palm, didn’t you? You went in and came back out… changed.”

Indy’s eyes widened. Getting these Stand abilities from the Devil’s Palm wasn’t just a one time thing, and had happened at least twice as far as he knew.

“I did.” Somehow, Indy knew that mentioning the Holy Corpse would be a tremendously bad idea.

The man took a step towards him, a strange gleam in his rheumy eyes as his Stand moved behind him with all the grace of a dancer. His stand was definitely a strange one, a towering metallic figure that almost reminded Indy of the occasional film he snuck in to see (because of course his father would never let his son indulge in something like film), all monochrome. On closer examination, it seemed to have a pattern like a prisoner’s striped shirt, although the white and black was replaced with several different shades of gleaming silver. Its head was shaped like a thimble and it stared at Indy with glowing golden eyes that looked more like artificial lights than actual human eyes.

“Did you find it?”

“Find… what?”

“The Corpse Part. The earthly remains of the most holy. There is a terrible, tremendous power in the corpse of the saint. I power I can feel… in you.”

Indy took a step back and realized that all he had to defend himself with was a simple knife on his hip, and he might be able to turn the situation around if the man was unarmed. Then the hobo picked up his pack, and before Indy’s eyes the simple bindle transformed into a six-shot revolver, which the man lifted to fire with trembling hands.

Indy dove to the side, hiding behind a sack of flour as the bullet tore through the canvas, sending plumes of white dust into the air. It was clear that whatever ability this man had, it wasn’t the same as Black Leather.

“No one can resist the power of my stand, Big Rock Candy Mountain! It gives me everything I’ll ever need!” Indy had heard of the song before at some point, and vaguely remembered that it described a sort of earthly paradise of indolence and indulgence. A stand that fulfilled the user’s every desire would certainly make fine match for the song.

At the very least, Indy had a leaner frame than the man, and could weave between the towering stacks of bagged flour as the man let out cries of frustration. The man seemed hesitant to fire, even when caught the occasional glimpse of Indy (and that saved his hide more than once), so Indy had to assume that whatever power transformed the bindle into a pistol was limited- producing more ammunition was either impossible or would somehow reverse the gun’s transformation.

Assuming that the stand gave the man a fully loaded gun, that meant he had five shots left. Of course, his caution in shooting also meant that getting him to run out of bullets would be difficult. Indy closed his eyes and focused on Black Leather, trying to see what he had to work with. Of course, Indy was wearing a leather belt and boots which he knew about already, but the hobo was wearing leather boots as well, which gave Indy an opportunity.

Black Leather pulled the man’s feet out from under him, sending him tumbling with a shout, and Indy could see that in his confusion he had thrown the gun into the air, but before Indy could contemplate trying to get his hands on it, it transformed back into a simple bag. So apparently the transformation would fail after it lost contact with the hobo.

Leaping over one of the lower stacks, Indy lunged towards the man and punched, only for his strike to be blocked by the arm of Big Rock Candy Mountain, before the stand threw him into the wall of the boxcar, nearly cracking the worn wood with the force of the throw. While he watched, the man knelt down and touched his boots, turning them into a pair of wooden clogs, effectively mitigating Indy’s one advantage.

“Come on kid, you didn’t know that you couldn’t hurt a stand? You really are a chump! Nothing but a stand can hurt a stand, and your puny little thing is no match for Big Rock Candy Mountain.” The man’s stand stomped towards Indy, eyes glowing amber. “Of course, the best way to disable a stand is just to disable the user.”  
  


Indy’s back was against the wall, or rather, the door, and he decided to make the best of what weapons he did have left, and quickly pulled off his belt.  
  


The hobo let out a guffaw. “Whatcha gonna do boy, whip me?” he looked to his stand. “Finish him off.”

The stand lunged, and Indy barely managed to yank himself out of the way, dragging himself by the belt in his hands using Black Leather. Using it as a sort of impromptu whip, Indy dragged the door of the boxcar open to the rushing winds… a massive drop off a bridge into a dry riverbed, a drop that was certainly fatal.

Once again Indy relied on his belt, using Black Leather to hook it onto the top of the boxcar and swinging out on it to avoid a vicious strike from Big Rock Candy Mountain. Indy found himself standing on the side of a boxcar, hanging on to a belt for dear life over a massive canyon. Carefully, Indy took his knife out and threw it into the cabin, missing his opponent by a wide margin.

“You missed, boy! This’ll be the end of the line for you! I promise, I’ll recover the corpse part from your dead body.” Indy couldn’t see his stand, but he could imagine it standing inside the box car, reeling up to deliver a punch that would break through the wooden side of the boxcar and send Indy flying to his death.

Indy grinned. “I wasn’t aiming for you.” The hobo turned to see Indy’s knife floating on its own (thanks to the work of Black Leather and the knife’s fine grip) and cutting massive tears into the sides of the sacks of flour, and paired with the wild winds from the speed of the train, the boxcar was filled with floating flour dust.

“You think a little baking flour’s going to stop me?”

“Well, yes. Have you ever heard of dust explosions?” As the man’s eyes widened in shock, Indy used Black Leather on three different items: he used it on his boots and his belt to boost his leap towards the next car while the leather handle of the knife sent the metallic blade spinning into one of the screws holding the boxcar together- causing sparks.

The sparks caught on the flour in the air, and the resulting explosion blew the boxcar apart, sending the hobo and his stand plummeting to the ground of the canyon below.

Indy let out a long sigh and started to get back into his cabin, hoping that bizarre occurrences like that wouldn’t become too frequent in his life.

\------

**Stand User: Henry Walton Jones, Junior**

**Stand Name: Black Leather**

**Abilities:** Black Leather gives the user the ability to control tanned goods like leather within a significant range around both user and stand, and the ability also extends to animal hides, although to a lesser extent. On a physical level, the stand is rather weak.

**Stand User: The Man in the Boxcar**

**Stand Name: Big Rock Candy Mountain**

**Abilities:** Big Rock Candy Mountain has the ability to transform any one item its user holds into whatever is ideal for the user, as long it remains in contact with the user. Once an item is transformed, it cannot be transformed again for a few minutes.

\------

The Man in the Boxcar, Big Rock Candy Mountain: Deceased


End file.
